"Sweet 'n' Sour" amp/cab combinations?

I wonder if any of you would be kind enough to give me the benefit of your experiences with different "flavors" of amps and cabs please?

Here's the thing, I don't have a lot of experience with non-practise (i.e. "real") amps and would like to avoid too many costly mistakes, as I'm not in a position to demo a lot of bass gear before I buy it (my local guitar shop doesn't have many brands of bass amp).

I play a Fender Precision and a Stingray and like a clear, hard, biting tone with the option to round it out and produce a good punchy mid-range "oomph" (without too much "honk").

The starting point for my rig, is a Hartke XL115 cab. Why (you may be asking)? Well, I bought it as an extension for my Hartke Kickback combo (120W @ 8 ohms) and it does a very good job too, but that setup just isn't loud enough and the amp is a bit limited on the "warmer" tone options (and power).

Here's what I would like to know ...

If I take a very crisp, "hi-fi" sounding cab (as I believe the XL115 to be) and add an equally "hi-fi" sounding amp (Hughes & Kettner Bass Base, Hartke HA3500, etc.), is it likely to increase the "brittleness" of the sound or will it simply produce a logical balance? Or, should I perhaps be looking for a warmer sounding amp (Nemesis 320, or anything with a valve preamp) to produce a better range of tones? Then again, would a "Sweet 'n' Sour" combination like this, just blend into blandness? I don't know, I've never tried it, but YOU might have done.

I really hope that this question isn't too vague for you all. I've read pages of threads here on which amps are "better" than others and which cabs are better than other cabs, but I can't get my head around the possible effects of different combinations. In the world of hi-fi (where I have slightly more experience), it's very common to put "analytical" source components with warm valve amps and "clinincal" sounding speakers, but hey, we're dealing with the real "front end" now I guess!

All points of view welcomed ...

(By the way, musical style is primarily rock/indie, played with a pick, or pop/rock played with fingers. Price/power range for an amp would be less than $1,000 (used gear is ok) with at least 250W @ 8 ohms).

I don't get it. Do you want something that is warm, or something hi-fi? Or something that can do both?

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Right the second time, something that can do both.

I just couldn't figure out if putting a "sharp" sounding cab with a "mellow" sounding amp would make the amp sound thinner/worse than it would with a more mellow/appropriate cab, or whether it would really bring out and amplify the warmth of it? (confused yet? )

Anyway, it seems that there's no substitute for experience here, so I'll just have to try whatever i can find locally.

I don't think I can make a general statement that would explain amp-cab matching but I can tell you from my experience that amp-cab matching is important.

When I had my ss Bmax pre it sounded great with my Avatar b212, b115 speaker combo. Now that I'm running an Ampeg SVP-CL (tube pre) I am finding that my speaker combo doesn't cut through well anymore. My solution is to replace the B212 with a sealed 4x8 cab I am putting the finishing touches on right now.

So I guess for me a thinner amp goes well with beefy cabs and beefy amps go better with punchy sealed cabs.

Good call Trevorus. Actually, I've just sent one back to the store! It was the 3 channel, programmable version and one of the channels wouldn't respond to any adjustments of the knobs. I don't have much patience with things that don't work properly straight out of the box , so I think I'll be giving Tech 21 gear a miss in future (my loss, possibly)!

I'm quite encouraged by the mixing and matching philosophy that most people are putting forward here though, so I'm thinking about a "growly" head to frighten my rather frigid Hartke XL115 cab (and subsequent XL410).

Hughes & Kettner do a beast known as the Quantum QT600. There's only one review of it that I could find online, but does anyone have any experience with one? I'd be interested to know what range of tones are possible and just how clean and precise it can sound if you back of the "growl" knob (yep, it really has one of those)!